On A Sullen Ground: Year Three
by DagonSt
Summary: More Slytherin!Harry AU. This one is unfinished and likely to remain so.
1. Strays

When the noise came again, Harry slipped off the low wall and turned very slowly towards the alleyway behind him. Harry Potter had in one evening blown up his aunt, broken every Ministry rule against underage magic, and run away from the Muggle house he had stopped calling home. He was in no mood to be watched from shadows.

But his eyes wouldn't adjust to the darkness of the alleyway, and whatever was standing there there didn't move even a little. "Come out," he ordered finally, "or I'll make you wish you had." He raised his wand to hex on the count of three - to be perfectly accurate, two and a half.

Before he could, a great black dog slunk out of the shadows - so large that Harry's first thought was magic, before he saw how thin the creature was, its matted and tangled fur. Just a stray, even if it did look as though it had come down from the hills to hunt small children. "Don't we feel silly now," he muttered, half relieved...half wishing he did have something to blast away at.

"I won't hurt you," he said, lowering his wand. He had never had much to do with dogs, apart from Hagrid's pets. This one was wary. "But I haven't got anything for you either. I ran away, didn't have time to get food." He kicked his trunk lightly. "Unless you can eat Potions textbooks." The dog padded over, and sniffed at the empty cage.

"That would solve a lot of problems, wouldn't it?" Harry said quietly. "If I knew who could fix things." Dumbledore might - or he might not. After last spring - after the Chamber of Secrets - Harry wasn't at all certain of help from that quarter. And he wasn't quite desperate enough to want to ask Lucius Malfoy for anything. The dog circled a few times, settled back on its haunches next to the trunk, standing guard and looking for all the world as though it had always belonged to Harry Potter. He smiled a little, ignoring the stray's fragrant odor.

"I wasn't sure I wanted to go back, you know. After what happened. But Aunt Marge... I didn't do _that_ on purpose at all, and I didn't even have a wand. They'd have to send me to Azkaban to really stop me." There was a silence there, a pause for consideration. "And I wouldn't let them," Harry said simply.

The dog kept its opinion to itself, and Harry kept his silence for a good hour. It was broken not by him, but by a voice from the next block over calling his name. Though carrying, it did not seem to be his uncle's characteristic bellow. "Ministry," he hissed, diving for his trunk. In two years' acquaintance with Draco Malfoy, he had picked up a spectacular array of curses - effectual and otherwise - and started listing them under his breath as he snatched out his invisibility cloak and grabbed for his broom. No time to lighten anything, he'd have to leave it all.

"Come -" The dog was nowhere to be seen. "Well, there's loyalty for you," he muttered, and took to the sky.


	2. Disappointments

Harry chanced on a compartment containing a slightly threadbare professor at one end and Hermoine Granger at the other, and sat precisely between the two. The one slept, the other read, and Harry looked out the windows until the train stopped and the dementor came.

He felt better after he ate the chocolate and, rather than discuss the occurrence with Granger, turned to the adult.

"Thank you, Professor -"

"Lupin. I'm sorry; your friend knew who I was already. And you're -"

"Harry Potter. The famous one." One thing he'd learned from Snape: get to it first, say it just the right way, and people stopped talking about history books.

"So you are. And a third year in - Slytherin?" Adults always looked surprised that he'd sorted into the snake-pit. Harry always wished they wouldn't. Doomed to disappointment, both of them.

"My parents were Gryffindors," he offered neutrally. It was nothing more than baiting, and Harry felt a little ashamed of the tactic. And wary: Granger was still there, listening. And he wasn't as sure of himself, back at Hogwarts again.

"So they were," replied the professor softly, and might have said more if Malfoy hadn't burst in, trailing minions. Granger slipped off to a quieter seat, perhaps in the Weasley compartment.

"Harry! There you are - did you see those awful things?"

Harry shrugged. "They came through."

Draco took a seat, just before the train lurched to a stop, and took a sidelong glance at Lupin, encompassing his threadbare robe and generally disreputable appearance in one disapproving look. "We all had a compartment up front - you should have come up there."

Harry was just as glad he hadn't. It didn't sound as though anyone else had had fainting fits. "Sorry, Draco," he said. Draco was up again as soon as the train stopped, and pulling at him impatiently. He turned back in the door of the compartment. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Professor Lupin."


	3. Heir Presumptive

The official story goes that somehow a basilisk got into the pipes and below the dungeon and killed a girl. Nothing about the Chamber, nothing about spiders and books and caverns underneath Hogwarts, and whatever Harry did down there. It's an obvious cover-up, and the rumors ran even faster after Lucius Malfoy abruptly resigned from the Board of Governors.

Father made him admit that Potter hadn't told him anything at all, and that was humiliating. Draco doesn't know why he didn't ask, in that last week. They're best friends, and Harry would have told him. Father was disappointed that he didn't figure out on his own that the Heir of Slytherin was the school's only Parselmouth. Draco bit his tongue and apologized for being so thick.

It made perfect sense: Harry never was much good at keeping control of snakes.

Father insists he obey the school rules this year, and stay far away from Sirius Black. Black, who served Voldemort, and who was expected to turn up at Hogwarts. Draco decides that this means that he had been quite wrong about his own father's loyalties. He feels obscurely relieved that it could be cleared up so easily.

And there's Harry again, who doesn't act like the Heir that Draco's always imagined. As quiet as though he's trying to disappear, and he hasn't yet gotten out his invisibility cloak. Hard to say who might have warned him about Black. Harry's relations are Muggles, and they don't even feed him properly.

Harry wakes up Draco up with his screaming again.

Draco opens his eyes and, in the clarity of four in the morning, has an epiphany: if Harry Potter is the Heir of Slytherin, something is gravely wrong with the world.

Then he leans over the edge of his bed and gropes for one of the books he'd dropped there, and chucks it at Potter's corner. A satisfyingly startled yelp suggests that the Boy Who Lived Dangerously is now awake as well. Draco lets his eyes drift shut again.

Then Harry yells again, and starts cursing. Draco leans over for a second volume, then looks up. Harry's trying desperately to smother the Monster Book of Monsters under the remains of his pillow. It serves him right, and Draco laughs. "Only back a week, and Potter's already found something vicious to fight." Harry grips the book tightly with both hands, and throws it back at him.

Draco can't just ask Harry, can't trust that he wasn't lying about it last year, so he takes it to Professor Snape one evening. Snape won't lie to protect Harry, certainly not from Draco. The Potions Master's office hours are so sparsely attended that he generally holds detention at the same time, but Malfoy waits for a day when no-one is there at all. "Is Potter really the Heir of Slytherin?"

He isn't prepared for Snape to explode, and steps back nervously. Snape is usually someone he can handle. "No. Potter is not the Heir of Slytherin, did not open the Chamber of Secrets, and _will_ be expelled if he spreads his self-aggrandizing lies any farther." He pins Draco with a look. "I had expected you to have more sense, Draco."

"I'm sorry, Professor." Draco flushes, but checks himself before offering his defense.

"But you did well by bringing it to me first."

"Thank you, Professor."

"Have him report for detention tomorrow."

Snape probably hasn't had to clean a cauldron in more than a year, between Harry and the Weasleys. "Yes, sir." Draco escapes as quickly as possible. Harry comes back from detention seething at Snape and the rumors both, and for an hour or two makes quite tolerable company.


	4. Influence

Of course he wanted to say something from the beginning, but he waited, watching the boys in class. Draco Malfoy the irreverent, smirking ringleader and Harry standing with him. Not a bodyguard as the other two seemed to be, but a silent, unsmiling shadow. It might have been cowardly of him; but after all, he hadn't known the situation at all, and he and Severus are only barely on speaking terms.

Severus delivers the wolfsbane potion like clockwork, and Remus doesn't know if he's always like this now, or if he thinks that a minute one way or the other will make a difference. He never stays to watch him drink it.

"Will you wait, Severus? I'd like to speak with you."

Snape's scowl deepens. "We have nothing to discuss, Lupin."

"Not about us." Remus focuses his attention on the goblet, though he doubts that that will make the interview any easier. "Harry."

"If Potter's conduct has been unacceptable - and that would not surprise me in the least - you are welcome to take appropriate disciplinary measures."

The werewolf drinks, not bothering to hide his grimace. "It's not that. It's... Draco _Malfoy_, Severus. How did that happen?" He looks up. "Does he even know about the Malfoys - is he alright?" Severus Snape is as likely to be sympathetic to Remus Lupin's worries about James Potter's son as Voldemort is to be the next Defense Against Dark Arts professor, but he can't help asking. It makes him a little sick, to think of Harry following the son of a prominent and dubiously-reformed Death Eater.

"Potter," Snape spat out the name like poison, "is the worst troublemaker to come though Slytherin in my tenure at Hogwarts. He has no respect for authority, rules, or sense - the very image of his father..."

Lupin misses the last of Severus's rant as he finishes off the potion. "But you agree they ought to be separated?"

"Yes. In theory."

That's the longest string of civil words Snape has addressed to him since their fifth year, Remus notes. He holds out hope that it will be followed by Severus taking a seat and discussing Harry Potter in reasonable tones. "And in practice, Severus?"

He sneers again, instead. "In practice, Lupin, it can't be done. If you want to waste your time, I give you leave to try it."

Interfering in students' relationships is not often done. Interfering in someone else's House is an even stickier business, and Severus as much as said he hadn't been able to do it. If Harry hadn't been James's son, Remus would be glad to leave it there. But Harry is, and Remus wants to help, and to know how he ever ended up in Slytherin, at the side of Draco Malfoy.

"I thank you, Severus." Remus smiles a little, feeling particularly fatalistic as he looks at the smoking chalice again. "It never hurts to try."


	5. Scene, Before Dinner

Scene, Before Dinner

**Potter:** I'm going to talk to the Weasleys. /_Potter has not yet looked directly at Malfoy, nor has he noticed how profoundly irritating this is to the other boy. A stranger watching would not guess that they had been close friends for two years._/

**Malfoy:** /_Straightens up, his mouth twisting into an unpleasant line._/ You're cracked, Potter. Why bother?

**Potter:** /_Looking at his hands, rather than Malfoy. He did not expect to have to explain his impulse, though now it seems inevitable._/ I think it's important. After what happened last year. I have to.

**Malfoy:** /_Leaning forward now, intent on dissuading Potter and so less careful about his methods and his appearance._/ Why, to tell them you didn't _mean_ to kill their baby sister?

**Potter:** I didn't do it. /_Abruptly, as punctuation, he shuts the book and puts it aside. Then he explains. Potter has had an entire summer to come to terms with what happened, rehearse what could be said about it. The words don't come easily, but they come._/ Ginny was the one controlling the basilisk. The Heir used her. Killed her.

**Draco:** /_Sits back again, frowning. His friend, Harry Potter, would bend over backwards to avoid offending the most worthless people in the school. He hadn't ever thought Harry had killed the girl on purpose._/ And you got away.

**Potter:** Almost. /_He looks at Draco now._/ He drowned. I held him down.

**Malfoy:** Well - congratulations. /_Malfoy is a boy who does not get his hands dirty. Instinctively, he knows that when someone has to die, he will give an order and it will happen. It does not, therefore, occur to him to be jealous, only amused and a little surprised. The slightest shadow mars his mood when he notices the book again - the journal he gave Harry for Christmas, that had his name embossed on the cover and could not be bought at Flourish and Botts. He is not inclined to puzzle out why, however. That, too, is someone else's job._/ Too many Weasleys to hold down at once, you know. And they're all bigger than you.

**Potter:** /_Grimaces at the thought._/ Look, it's not something everyone - anyone - knows. But I owe them, for Ginny. And they might be useful, next time something happens.

**Malfoy:** Getting killed by Sirius Black for you? /_Not knowing how to persuade Potter into reason, Malfoy settles for his most successful tactic: snide insinuations and outright insults. Potter fails to notice, provoking him further._/

**Potter:** I don't know yet. /_He did not want to admit that, but he's been trying out reasons since he first had the impulse and none of them quite fit._/

**Malfoy:** /_Stands up, growing impatient._/ Don't ruin people's dinners until you do. You can keep on moping alone all term.

**Harry:** /_Watches him leave, having retreated again into expressionlessness._/ I'll think about it.


	6. Condescension

If Potter wanted to sit down with Weasleys, that was his problem. Draco ordered Vin and Greg to make certain they didn't murder the idiot, and set off alone for the library. It was Harry's stupid, impossible game, but he was going to win it.

Hermione Granger had her own table in the library, occasionally shared with the pack of Ravenclaws she studied with. But mostly she had it to herself, and stacked up more books than she'd ever have the time to read. Draco pushed one pile aside, and sat down.

"I want to do some extra Potions reading. You seem to be the one to ask."

The girl didn't look up. "What about your professor?"

"Mine? He doesn't think third-years should be working on Veritaserum." Draco could do an awfully good imitation of Snape, but now didn't seem the time. The little mudblood ought to be grateful that someone was paying attention to her, but she just sounded bored.

"The books are in the Restricted Section. You'll need a note from Snape."

"This one isn't." He slid it across the table. It was old, and poorly bound, and bore the bookplate of a Caius Malfoy, who might have been a great-great-something. Draco had ripped out half of the instructions for Veritaserum before walking into the library.

Granger picked it up gingerly, holding it carefully to avoid breaking the spine again. "You _cannot_ just carry something like this around in your bag. Half the pages are out! - Who are you going to use it on?"

Draco leaned back. "I don't know yet."

"Slytherins are strange," she said, eyes still on the book. "You never talk to anyone else, and I bet you don't talk to each other either. Did Potter tell you he fainted on the train?"

"What?" Draco sat up straight again.

"Maybe you should use it on him." She closed the book, and finally looked up. "Anyway, isn't flooding Gryffindor Tower more in your line?"

"Towers don't flood," Draco said sharply. "Dungeons flood. I'll thank you not to share that intelligence with the Weasleys." She smiled thinly, and he tilted his head, setting aside for a moment the new problem with Harry. "If they ever ask you, I mean. Have they noticed you have a Time-Turner?"

They had not. Ten points to Slytherin.

"You're in too many classes not to."

"I don't have a month to spare for Veritaserum."

"Next year, then. But you can borrow the book now, if you want." Muggles probably didn't have stories about accepting favors from the wrong people.

"In this state, it counts as a rescue," she returned, clearly offended on the tome's behalf.

Not if we flood Gryffindor Tower, he thought. "Well, let me know if you want anything else - we have a much better library than this at home." His father would go spare if he found out, which he wouldn't.

"And what do I do for you - make potions?" Draco blinked. Gryffindors were _direct_. Well, she was sharp, but she was also a mudblood.

"Father doesn't _tell_ him to mark me well, you know."

"He shouldn't have to, should he."

Draco laughed, and changed the subject quickly. "Granger, you're utterly wasted in Gryffindor. How are you managing with arithmancy?"


	7. Treachery

It might have been a noise that made Harry look up from his bedtime reading.

Draco leaned against the wall, hair and eyes shining in the firelight, everything below the pointed chin swallowed in black. Very striking, very _Draco_, and Harry appreciated the effect. He smiled slightly, and turned back to his book.

"So you think you did well with the Weasleys?" Layers and layers in that, and none of them meant anything good. The effort was meant for him, then. Still not bad.

"Yes. They've come around nicely."

"Do you think so?" Harry had made an extensive study of Draco Malfoy, and reserve was very unlike him. But maybe he was growing out of temper-tantrums.

"I just said it."

"There are things you don't know, Harry." Draco detached himself from the wall and came to rest sitting lightly on the edge of Harry's bed.

"Even more things?" For once the sarcasm really was light, not just tired. For the first time this year Harry felt he was in the right place. He'd done something outrageous, and Draco was furious, and it was the most natural thing in the world.

"About why Sirius Black is hunting you." Harry couldn't see yet how Draco was going to hurt him with this - they'd already been over Azkaban, and Black's escape.

"Why?"

"Do you know what a secret-keeper is?"

Harry didn't, but Draco went on anyway. "Sirius Black was your father's closest friend. His best man, and your godfather."

Voldemort's second-in-command...his godfather? "We're practically cousins."

"And he had the secret of where your parents were hiding," Draco continued ruthlessly, raising his voice and losing the measured tone. "And he gave it to Voldemort."

Harry inhaled, let out the breath, and then again. "He betrayed my parents?" Draco didn't answer. Draco had known for weeks - years? He was smiling now, satisfied with Harry's reaction. Harry thought about shoving him off the bed, before something better occurred to him. "Are you trying to warn me off Gryffindors, or are you that jealous of the Weasleys?"

"I only thought you should know, Harry." Draco should know that that wide-eyed earnestness only worked on Snape. Maybe Harry would tell him, sometime.

"I needed to," Harry said instead. "Thank you." And now he needed to think about things. Sirius, and his father, and friends. And maybe who should be hunting for whom. Draco was up again, off to be smug somewhere else. Harry waited until he turned away. "You're closer to me than anyone, you know."

It wasn't the sort of thing Draco would have thought of. It lifted Harry's spirits considerably when the reminder made Draco spin around in complete shock. He grinned - more of a smirk, really - and turned to lie down, leaving Draco alone to worry about what he would learn from his father's mistakes.


	8. Nasty Tempers

The corridors of Hogwarts are just a little too dark, a little too cold, even at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. Harry thinks the vaguely unpleasant atmosphere is deliberate, meant to hurry students along to their classes and rooms. Crouched near the painting of the Fat Lady, the flickering lights wear on his nerves, the slight dampness of the walls a trifle obvious this far from the dungeons. His throat hurts, where Goyle tried to cast a voice-stealing curse on him.

He picked the wrong night to steal Gryffindor's password; it was easy to slip out of the Death-Day party, but after an hour no Gryffindor has been inspired to leave. So Harry waits for them, just warm enough in his invisibility cloak. Draco had elected to spend the evening in the library, looking for water-summoning spells. Harry hopes he's having better luck. The stones paving the corridor are damp; if they haven't been spelled that way, there might be a source of water under the tower. It might be the Chamber of Secrets itself. It might, Harry decides, be better to let Draco handle that.

"You have to let me in."

Harry winces. Longbottom _would_ be the first one back to Gryffindor, and he _would_ have forgotten his password, and Gregory still hasn't mastered that hex. And then he looks up to see something much, much worse. A stranger, a man, who had had no cause to speak for a long, long time. That's Sirius Black, Harry realizes. Sirius Black is inside Hogwarts.

Voldemort's second in command doesn't look like much, in his filthy Muggle clothes. What he looks, though, is dangerously insane. Maybe the painting couldn't tell; maybe she was just following the old Gryffindor tradition of courage unmixed with cunning. Black's impatience ends violently - he lashes out at the painting. The Lady shrieks.

She couldn't be really hurt, of course. Things like that have to be burnt away. But Black, looking even more murderous, turns to run. Harry clambers up too - the situation around Gryffindor Tower is about to get decidedly sticky, and he doesn't want to be trampled on. Feeling almost secure in his invisibility cloak, he dashes down the corridor Sirius Black had taken.

Hogwarts is supposed to be impregnable, protected by its monster-filled lake and the Forbidden Forest, warded against Apparition. This year, there's even a pack of Dementors from Azkaban lurking around the grounds. But it isn't, quite. There's a secret passageway in the third-floor corridor, in statue of an especially forbidding witch. Harry learned about it from watching the Weasley twins, last year. And Sirius Black knows it, too.

Harry is going to be trapped inside Hogwarts all year long, hiding from Dementors, while the man who betrayed his parents and wants to kill him can come and go as he likes. Draco has it right - he _owes_ Sirius Black. Just as Black reaches the hunchback's statue, Harry calls out over his own hoarseness. "That won't help you." The madman freezes, looking down the empty hallway. "Not if you come back here again. I know a prison you'll _never_ escape." It's satisfying, in a way, to see the expression on Black's face just before he disappears.

And then that's done, and Harry has to force himself to keep walking down the hallway. He circles around the statue, then shrugs off the cloak that suddenly feels too confining, wraps it under his school robes. He hadn't meant anything by the threat - it just seemed the best thing to say to a man who's spent twelve years locked up with the most horrifying things he's ever seen. But to do it... to really do it would be the easiest thing in the world. It would be murder. Again. Harry wonders if his face looks all that different than Sirius Black's did.

He turns automatically towards Slytherin, footsteps dragging. Everyone thinks he should be a Gryffindor, even Sirius Black... Out of nowhere, a thin, hard hand seizes his shoulder. Harry bites back a scream, grabbing for his wand much too slowly as he's spun around.

"_Potter_." Snape, white-lipped in fury. Harry gapes at the second shock of seeing someone who is definitely not Sirius Black. He doesn't have the time to feel relief, though. The professor hauls him down the corridor in the opposite direction, and Harry has to run to keep up.

"Sirius Black has been seen inside Hogwarts." Snape's voice took on an oddly triumphant note. "Evidently, he has an accomplice within the school. And the one student he's specifically targeted -" he shakes Harry roughly - "was nowhere to be found." He pulls Harry up short. "If you set foot out of Slytherin after curfew this year, it will be my _pleasure_ to mount your head on the top of Gryffindor Tower myself."

Harry stares at him, eyes wide. He can't find the words to tell Snape that _he_ isn't what Harry's afraid of at all. There are worse things. He tries, at least, to look unapologetic. "Of course, sir."


	9. Interlude: Rattling About

_We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us idly towards eternity without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation._  
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

"That's enough," she says after a while, crossing her arms the way her mother must have.

His eyes flicker closed, and he leans back against the base of a pillar he can't quite see. "You know it can't cause any harm. Such a _petty_ child."

"Or I'll scream," the girl threatens. She's hopeless for conversation, but a wonderfully adept vocalist. She used to have brothers.

"Scream all you want, little fool," he sneers, lapsing into silence anyway. Water drips around them. He can picture her mother - a nagging _hausfrau_, graying and frazzled. And a henpecked father...yes, of course she has a father. He decides to spare them, this time around.

"It isn't right to talk about him that way," she goes on, pressing her temporary advantage. She'd like to hit him. If he were one of her brothers, she would. But if she can touch him, then _he_ could touch her, and she doesn't want that at all. It has never occurred to him that it might be possible, or desirable, to touch her at all.

He leans forward, hand on his knee. "I _detest_ the murdering brat. I'll talk about him any way I want."

"I don't want you to talk about him at all," she demands. Her resolved expression, set in ghostly phosphorescence, is the brightest thing in the hall. The lights started out low, gradually dimmed to nothing at all, as though all the magic had drained away. He suspects the wardings that make the walls impermeable even to them are channeling away the ancient magics, slowly sucking them dry. A regrettable waste.

"Then why don't we talk about you, Ginevra?" He straightens, to look down at her from his full height. She can't stand that, which is why he keeps doing it. "There's so much we could talk about, you and I."

"You stop that right now, Tom," she orders, not retreating but trying _so_ hard not to cry. He grins bleakly at the sight. "You don't know anything."

"I know _everything_, silly girl. I've been _inside_ you, remember?"

"And I've been in your memories, too," she snaps. "A sixth-year who couldn't make decent people like him." She doesn't usually think to turn it back against him, but she's learning.

"I wasn't _trying_ to make them like me. I'm Lord _Voldemort_, and I -"

She smiles, now. Making Tom Riddle - Lord Voldemort, even - sink to debating a first-year is a victory she's come to enjoy. He can't make her do anything now. "Only know _that_ because I told you. You're not even Tom Riddle - only what he bothered to write down."

"That's ridiculous."

"Who was your Dark Arts professor?"

"That isn't _important_."

"It could be. You don't know."

"And how does it help you, remembering every detail of the boy who didn't save you? Messy black hair, hazel eyes..."

"_Green_." He always tries that, trying to make her doubt herself again. Wanting to drive her mad, just to pass the time. She stomps her foot, and the water splashes. Ginny does these things, now and again: in one of their first arguments she pulled a torch from its verdigris holder and hurled it at him. Tom pretends that he could, if he wanted to. Not dead; not really dead, only trapped. Temporary, like the inside of a book.

"Are you sure?"

"_Slytherin_ green. You're horrid, Tom Riddle."

"And you're a silly little girl, Ginevra. There's nothing to be done about it." They glare at each other, and this time Ginny is the first to walk away, the surface of the pool scarcely disturbed in her wake.


	10. Peculiar Institution

"You can't eat in the library," she insisted in an urgent whisper. "You'll leave crumbs and drop things."

"Someone'll be along to pick them up," Draco shrugged over his admittedly crumbly cookies. "You really don't want any?"

But the Gryffindor, having latched onto the issue, was not to be distracted. "Who, exactly, is going to clean up after you, Malfoy?"

"Well, house elves obviously... oh, no," he finished in genuine dismay at her expression.

"House elves."

"With everything you read, you've never heard of house elves," Draco complained. He felt it entirely beneath him to notice the creatures except when strictly necessary; let alone having to explain them to mudbloods and...well, Potter. "They live in houses and do the cooking and cleaning... whatever needs doing. Hogwarts has lots. Stop worrying about the crumbs."

"Why?"

"Like I said - it'll get cleaned up. Keep your voice down, will you?"

"I meant why do they do the cleaning up?"

Draco slouched lower, certain that getting the shrill girl's help, and perhaps Arithmancy answers, was not worth the humiliation of sitting in the library, whispering about the servants. "Orders. House elves're bound to obey, no matter what. It's simpler than _broomsticks_, Granger -"

"They're slaves, you mean." Draco was leaning over, pulling out the book she'd asked for last week, and missed seeing her expression of horror.

"They're _house_ elves, Granger," he drawled. "Don't get romantic, and keep your voice down."

"It isn't right to keep another intelligent being in bondage."

She got like this in classes, sometimes: so attached to a thought that not even the professor could get her off it. "Shows you've never talked to a house elf. Granger, they'll iron their own hands if you tell them to - they aren't smart."

"If it's magical slavery, it's even worse. Isn't _Imperius_ illegal?"

"It's not Imperius - they're not even people. Look, Granger." He propped his feet on her table, leaned back precariously. "If I'm to have an ugly little creature that isn't so bright, or so nice, and can do magic without wands running about my house, it had _better_ bow and cringe and call me 'master'."

The mudblood girl shook her head vigorously, upsetting whatever order it was she tried to impose on her hair. "That just means the entire system's wrong."

"Works fine for me," Draco confirmed. "Are you done yet?"

"For now," Granger said, opening her Arithmancy texts.


End file.
